Warning: BORING STUFF, no flashy, ajaxy whatsoever - just a daily problem, we also have to deal with.

SixApart started a design Contest for "Blog-Layouts" (together with Adobe and Stylemaster)

My first impression was, that all these ugly not very good looking submissions are not worth the $5000 in cash prizes SixApart is sponsoring.

But Byrne Reese wrote an interesting "introduction" to that contest, and the ideas behind it.

It's logical enough right? After all, about 99% of all blogs, including all of the ones from Movable Type, TypePad, LiveJournal, WordPress, Blogger and probably any other blogging platform you can think of, all use one of roughly the same set of layouts: one column, two-column left, two-column right, and three column (with a few additional variants as well).

Imagine how easy it would be for a user to change their design of their blog if they merely had to replace a single stylesheet and not be forced to completely re-write the HTML of their website?

I totaly agree!

Bottom line: Standards level the playing field by reducing the potential for any single company to leverage technical monopolies......

But standards won't be accepted, if they are just "announced" by a single company.